Execution of Billy Ray Irick postponed

6:40 PM,
Dec. 11, 2013

Written by

Brian Haas
| The Tennessean

The Tennessee Supreme Court has rescheduled the execution of murderer Billy Ray Irick.

Irick, who raped and killed a 7-year-old Knoxville girl he had been baby-sitting in 1985, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Jan. 15 in a wave of executions Tennessee is seeking to carry out. But the Supreme Court rescheduled the execution for Oct. 7, 2014, because of new legal challenges to the way Tennessee plans to put the condemned to death.

Tennessee's executions have been been on hold for at least two years because a key lethal injection drug, sodium thiopental, became unavailable. It ...